Our Lab puppy is now 9 months old and she’s growing like a weed!
I was just telling the folks over at my other blog that she’s now 60 lb and it’s becoming harder and harder to take her for a walk because she tugs on the leash so hard that she’s almost pulling us off our feet. In other words she’s a real drag – or we are! We use a comfort wrap harness when we walk her and it helps to some degree, but she’s so strong!
Normally in the evenings she calms down and while she still plays a lot she also takes naps, especially as the evening drags on. Last night though … she just wouldn’t calm down. It was like she was on a pep pill or something.
She was running back and forth from room to room, jumping up on the couch beside my husband dropping her toy bones on him to get him to play and so on.
At one point she came racing into the room and jumped on our leather recycling chair and almost tipped it over backwards! If I hadn’t caught it both she and the chair would have crashed to the ground. She did manage to whack the home theater speaker while she was running around and just about knocked it off it’s speaker mount too.
We’ve talked to other Lab owners and most say their pups were pretty hyper too, but we get the feeling when we talk to them that our Midnight is a lot more hyper than their’s were … or maybe time has faded the memory of that hectic time now that their dogs have calmed down.
I just hope that Midnight starts to calm down a bit soon – at least while we’re out walking with her. Someone told us the other day that she’ll calm a bit when we get her spayed. We haven’t done that yet but plan to sometime in the next month or two. Does anyone know if it’s true that she’ll calm when she’s spayed?
If anyone has any tips as to how to get her to be a bit more co-operative when we take her out for walks I’d appreciate some advice. Thanks!
Have you tried a Gentle Leader for walks? I used one on our puppy on the recommendation of a dog trainer. Eventually she learned to walk calmly, but I don’t know whether to attribute it to her learning who was boss, or just calming down naturally.
For the first few months our dog would rush at our ankles and nip us like crazy when we walked. We looked like spastic Riverdancers trying to get out of her way. She’s two now — some better, but still full of energy.
The best thing to do for this is to get on your bike and let your dog run beside you with a leash as well of course and see who is walking who than?
Our yellow lab is now 8 years old. She’s still hyper. We were told she would stop being so hyper when she turned about 3 years of age. We are still waiting. Spaying did not affect her activity level. Her gimpy left hip (labs have a tendency for joint issues) does slow her down a little bit. One good thing is…she doesn’t chew everything like she did as a puppy. She chewed through our wood fence. She chewed so much her canine teeth are blunt, not sharp.
As for the walking issue, I agree with the gentle leader. It helped our lab immensely…and we were able to walk her without her pulling us. I sure wouldn’t try riding a bike holding the leash connected to a hyper lab! That’s just a disaster in the making. A painful disaster, I might add. The score would be….lab 1, bike rider 0.
Midnight is a gorgeous pup, btw.